This section provides background information related to the present disclosure which is not necessarily prior art.
There are many temptations to distract a driver waiting for a red light to turn green. A driver may text messages, talk on the phone, look for things in the car, or even do grooming. As a result, the driver may not notice the light change to green and either delay moving forward or miss the green light entirely. Consequently, traffic congestion worsens, drivers become frustrated, and carbon emissions increase.
The existing art deals with this problem by informing a driver of how long a traffic light signal will last, and alerts a driver of a signal change. At a traffic intersection, dedicated short range communications (DSRC) and non-DSRC based applications can be used to do this. For example, DSRC vehicle to infrastructure (V2I) applications receive Signal Phase and Timing (SPaT) messages from roadside equipment and inform the driver of how many seconds remain before the signal phase changes. Other DSRC-based systems inform the driver of this information through a display or as an alert. Non-DSRC based applications include Audi's® Online Traffic Recognition System, Connected Signals′® smart phone application Enlighten, and Honda's® Driving Support System, which uses infrared beacons. Some problems, however, remain with the existing systems. For example, the existing systems use countdown technology and drivers are alerted more often than necessary. As a result, a driver may elect to block out or turn off the alert system all together.
The present teachings improve on the existing systems by advantageously providing systems and methods to alert an inattentive driver to enter an intersection during a green light.